CNN "Larry King Live" - Transcript
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
KING: Thanks, Deborah.
Deborah Feyerick on the scene in New York. Speaking of New York, let's go to the state capital, Albany, and check in with Governor David Paterson, the Democratic Governor of the State of New York.
GOV. DAVID PATERSON (D), NEW YORK: Good evening, Larry.
KING: What's the latest information you have on all of this, Governor?
PATERSON: Well, Larry, I've heard about this. But I think that it is so important to bring those who tried to inflict pain on a lot of our citizens to justice, that I don't want to go beyond anything the investigators are saying publicly.
KING: What has the conversations with Mayor Bloomberg taught you, if anything?
PATERSON: Well, we're just very happy that somebody saw something and somebody said something. It could be a whole different description that we would be discussing this evening and it could have been very tragic. But the t-shirt vendor told a mounted police officer. And the New York City Police Department cleared Times Square in a matter of a half hour, which is stellar. And we have a very strong police force there and a strong police force in New York State.
We've gone through this a lot. We have all kinds of threats assessments every couple of weeks. There are a lot of stories that don't come out that turn out to be false alarms. And we are happy to say that people are safe today, as they were yesterday.
The problem, though -- and this is what terrorism really is -- is whether or not people feel as if they can conduct their normal business. And that's something that we have to persuade the public that the situation, at least in this instance, is under control.
KING: But, Governor, the White House doesn't characterize the car bomb scare as terrorism until today. You used the word this weekend. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today: "I would say that was intended to terrorize and that whoever did that would be categorized as a terrorist."
Do you agree?
PATERSON: Larry, I was coming from an event -- Asian-Pacific Heritage Night. And it was at 32nd and Fifth Avenue. My and assistant and I drove right past that area right around 7:00 in the evening or 7:30, something like that.
Don't think that even I, as the governor of the state, don't feel a little bit of anxiety about having been in the vicinity. And so that's what I equate terrorism. It's the symbolic attempt to make masses of people feel frightened and to deny them of their freedoms that this country allows.
So I think that it can come from Timothy McVeigh's car bomb, that killed 168 people in Oklahoma City. It can come from the Middle East.
Any time violence or the threat or violence is used to distract people from the everyday lives, I would label it terrorism.
KING: Do you have knowledge that other acts that we may never have heard of were prevented?
PATERSON: I mean, from time to time, that probably has been the case. And there are -- believe me, we have a strong Homeland Security system. And coordination between the agencies, I think, is the biggest advantage that we have from, perhaps, where we were 10 years ago. And there are a lot of false alarms, as well.
But there's certainly, I must say, in my time as governor, every -- every two weeks, you kind of hear about something that could be brewing. And, fortunately, to this point and on -- in the period that I've been governor, we have not had a major incident as yet.
But really, you know, these car bombs are what we are specializing in, in terms of trying to stop, because it's -- it's almost impossible unless you just stopped everybody's car and search them. You have people with tinted windows. You can't see who they are they. The most difficult types of threats for law enforcement to address.
But as I said before, the coordination of the federal, state and local officials in -- and law enforcement authorities in this case, it was a banner day for all of them. And we should all, as Americans, congratulate all of them.
KING: Thank you.
Governor David Paterson, the governor of New York.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source